For the past year, a photography collective in São Paulo, Brazil, has been creating short, troubling, and cinematic videos of the public protests that first swept the country in 2013.
Brazil
Posted inNews
As World Cup Takes Spotlight, Brazilian Police Attack Artists and Activists [UPDATED]
Yesterday, the soccer team of World Cup host Brazil played, and tied with, Mexico. But on the same day that Brazilian players were proudly representing their country on the field in the northern city of Fortaleza, some 450 miles south, military police attacked nonviolent protestors in Recife, the country’s fifth-largest city.
Posted inOpinion
From Dalí to Leonardo on the Backs of Playing Cards
When Brazilian artist Sōnia Menna Barreto was a teenager in São Paulo, her mother used to stay up all night long playing cards with her friends. That memory sunk into Barreto’s consciousness, surfacing in a surreal series of trompe l’oeil paintings the artist has been creating over the last few years.
Posted inArt
Ahead of World Cup, Brazilian Art Flourishes in NYC
There may never have been a better month to see Brazilian art in New York. Last weekend, Frieze brought a taste of São Paulo art galleries Casa Triângulo, Fortes Vilaça, Mendes Wood, Vermelho, and Jaqueline Martins, as well as Rio de Janeiro’s A Gentil Carioca, to Manhattan.
Posted inArt
The Politics of Rio Graffiti and Unrest Over the World Cup
Since graffiti became officially legal in February (just months after Justin Bieber visited Brazil and got in trouble for spray-painting on a wall there), artists have been uninhibitedly plastering the city with images expressing their concerns about the FIFA World Cup.
Posted inNews
Brazilian Illustrator Becomes First Latin American to Win Hans Christian Andersen Award
Little in childhood is more magical than reading a beautifully illustrated book.
Posted inArt
Vale Cultura and the “Food for the Soul” Experiment in Brazil
A little over a decade ago, President Lula de Silva announced his vision that every Brazilian would eat three meals a day. He worked to achieve that dream through the Bolsa Familia program, which economists say has lifted 22 million people out of extreme poverty. Last month, Lula’s successor President Dilma Rousseff inaugurated another innovative program called Vale Cultura.
Posted inArt
Seeking Humanity in the Barbarity of Brazil’s Slave Past
At the University of São Paulo’s Museum of Contemporary Art, a new exhibition is interrogating Brazil’s legacy of slavery, disrupting a body of photography that was meant to normalize slavery.
Posted inNews
Artists Protest Federalization of Brazilian Museum
A month and a half ago, Brazil lit up with protests as a million people took to the streets. The country is due to host the World Cup in less than a year (and the Olympics in less than three), but many Brazilians are increasingly unhappy with their government in the face of the impending soccer tournament. We reported on the eviction of indigenous people at the site of the Brazilian Indian Museum, and now another, more prestigious museum seems to have entered the fray: the National Museum Honestino Guimarães, or the National Museum of the Republic, part of the Cultural Complex of the Republic in Brasília.
Posted inNews
Brazil Evicts Indigenous People in Violent Clash Over Sports Stadium
Brazilian police dressed in riot gear stormed an old museum in Rio de Janeiro last week with tear gas and pepper spray in order to evict some 20 indigenous people squatting there. The building, the former site of the Brazilian Indian Museum, is adjacent to the Maracanã stadium and set to be demolished as part of plans to renovate the stadium for next year’s World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.
Posted inNews
Brazilian Government Gives Workers $25 a Month for Culture
If the NEA needed any more reasons to look inadequate, Brazil just offered one: the government has decided to give Brazilian workers a stipend of $25 a month just for “cultural expenses” — that’s anything from books and movies to tickets to art museums.
Posted inBooks
Brazilian Art Under Dictatorship
LOS ANGELES — Brazilian Art under Dictatorship, a new book by John Jay College’s Claudia Calirman, takes a look at the works of three artists: Antonio Manuel, Artur Barrio and Cildo Meireles. These artists worked during the height of Brazil’s most repressive military regime in the late 1960s and early 70s.
